


no one keeps their voices anymore

by watfordbird33



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Angst, F/M, Kaz Brekker Character Study, Minor Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-20 17:04:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11339685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: There are many lies Kaz tells others, but only one he tells himself.





	no one keeps their voices anymore

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for angst, mentions of deliberate violence, and sexual references.

There’s a story he used to tell himself, late at night when the waves crashed and the thieves shouted in the Barrel. It always started with  _ Once upon a time,  _ because that’s how all stories should begin. 

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Kaz Brekker, and he had no broken places.

 

The story used to feel like cement in his blood and bones: infinitely sure, infinitely dependable. He would listen to her low quicksilver voice, and his heart would not skip beats like a foolish man’s would. He would watch the curtain of her hair, and his hands would not shift under his gloves like a foolish man’s would.

It was very easy. It was.

Easy to remain, to placate, to perfect. Easy to heal.

He is still very good at denial. It is one of the things he is best at. After breaking hearts.

 

But his denial is slipping.

He can hear it, sometimes, when he closes his eyes: waves crashing, thieves shouting in the Barrel. Even now, though, Kaz Brekker--Dirtyhands that he is--is not so romantic as to associate these things with her.

A girl? said Jesper, the first time Kaz came back from the bar and smelled of cinnamon and twilight and the rosemary stars in Inej’s long black hair. Our Kaz?

Kaz Brekker--Dirtyhands that he is--was not so romantic as to let such a comment go. He broke Jesper’s nose. There was no blood, but his hands behind the gloves still flinched, as they had not to see Inej.

 

Sometimes he imagines things that make him curl with loathing: the space under Inej’s chin, where the shadows haunt her collarbones, and the way she smiles in the dark.

Easy to remain, to placate, to perfect. Easy to heal. 

But he is not so good at articulation, which is why when she asks him what’s wrong he says Jesper and makes the annoyed-with-Jesper face that does absolutely nothing to sum up how he really feels.

Breaking hearts. And denial. And keeping his hands still, except among corpses. Always among the dead.

Have you killed? he said to Inej, and it was brusque.

She told him she’d killed the broken ones and he wanted to cry--absurd,  _ absurd-- _ because even then he could feel the untouched parts of him cracking. He could feel the scabbing break. She was the infinite pinprick beginning of the flaws in his armor. He had no flaws. He had too many, all at once.

 

Do you know about Jesper and Wylan?

He thinks about skin and skin and skin. It’s not the arrangement of boys that shatters him, though she might think that later, and watch him with cold eyes. Just skin. There is no glove that you can use to hide yourself so thoroughly as dark.

He thinks he’s close. --He thought he was close.

Do you know about the breathlessness?

And the tears?

And the not-too-fast-merchling, getting-excited-are-we?

I was unaware, Kaz says, and his voice is Inej’s voice, it’s Jesper’s, it’s Wylan’s. It’s Nina’s, though hers is Matthias’s. No one keeps their voices anymore.

 

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Kaz Brekker, and he had no broken places.

 

She is the insistence that he is still human. He thought he had lost himself a long time ago, amid the dead. (Sometimes--without herhe’s as thoroughly entombed as if he was.)

She curses him like she cares. 

He reassures himself--though nothing is ever a reassurance, anymore, because he has no broken places,  _ he has no breaks _ \--with the thought that a younger Kaz would have touched her by now. He would have stripped her bare. He would have lain with her and licked into the hollows of her collarbones, where all the shadows flirt.

He’s stronger now, and weaker, and there are too many contradictions in the way she smiles.

Perhaps an oxymoron. Perhaps insanely real; the realest, the true.

Jesper said, Braid your hair quick, Inej, or Kaz will have to do it for you. He’s been watching you long enough to learn.

 

The first time Kaz hears Jesper and Wylan laughing and gasping and whispering against open lips, he does not understand how anyone could be so comfortable as to manage such a thing.

(He would be unintelligible.)

(He would taste her everywhere. )

(He would drink the quicksilver off her lips.)

She would be his glove, his insulation. She would light him on fire, and he would burn.

 

Kaz, she says, in the door of his room.

He’s been telling himself stories, while she’s been gone--downstairs, cooking for Nina. Smiling at Matthias. Listening to Jes and Wylan in the room upstairs. He’s been saving up for tomorrow, so he can solidify the cement and begin to dry and deny all over again.

Kaz, can I--

The story starts up again, and it goes something like this.

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Kaz Brekker, and he fell apart.

 

And he realizes: she is everything he’s hated himself for; all the cracks in his armor; all the dreams he’s hidden away under covers and behind closed eyes. It’s hard to find pleasure when there are gloves between him and what he wants.

No more denial.

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Kaz Brekker, and  ~~ he fell in love ~~ .

 

Do you understand? she asks him, frighteningly casual. Folded arms over small breasts and tight eyes, tight mouth. Is she scared? Can she feel it? She says it again, and he feels like all the times he broke Jesper’s nose just for implication. Do you understand?

Once he was very good at denial. Almost as good as he was at breaking hearts. 

Now it’s someone else breaking his heart.

Do you understand? she says.

I understand, he says.

He doesn’t know what she said. He doesn’t care because he can feel the long lithe shape of her all against him, what it would be like; how his blood would sing. Dirtyhands. Dirtyhands. But he would be so gentle. He would be everything, all at once.

 

She’s looking at him.

Kaz, she says.

When he first saw her, he thought she was beautiful. Such thoughts have been repressed, since. Kaz Brekker--Dirtyhands that he is--is not so romantic as to associate such things with her.

 

Inej.

He thinks, Do you know what you are to me?

 

I don’t think you’re hearing me, Kaz, she says, half-laughing. Her arms are still folded. He can see the curve of her breast and the silk of the dark skin above her forearms. He wants to know what it would feel like to put his hand (ungloved) right there: above her slight chest, where her shape begins to swell. 

I’m hearing you, he says. You want to go out. Scout with Jes.

Then acknowledge me, Dirtyhands. Wish me well.

Has she ever asked this of him, before?

He wants to say, Don’t call me that.

He wants to say, Just Kaz. 

_ Your  _ Kaz.

(He hates himself for all the thoughts, for all the fantasies, for the way he lingers on the sweet U of her shoulder, the muscle in her upper arm. He hates himself for the stories he tried to tell. And the endings he never wrote. And the gloves. The corpses, the gloves. Jordie. And the look on Jesper’s face, on Wylan’s.)

He could say it, but his voice is not his own.

No mourners, he says instead, and his heart is breaking. He is made of broken places. He is Kaz Brekker and he is not invulnerable. 

No funerals.

And she smiles, and then she’s gone. 


End file.
